Think about your own personal experience with subscriptions to special interest publications. What is it about these newsletters that makes you excited to read them every time they circulate?
The simple answer is that the content within them is either useful to you, informative, interesting, entertaining or inspiring.
The bottom line: It’s time to elevate your email marketing strategy with an informative newsletter.
What’s a Newsletter and Why Does It Matter?
Newsletters began as printed reports that contained company news. These reports were then sent to a target audience such as employees and/or customers on a regular basis.
Fast forward to the digital age, where newsletters are sent via email by subscription. Today’s take on newsletters contains the same valuable content and important information as the print letters of yore, but they coincide with email marketing strategies.
So how important is it to have a newsletter? Surely you can get by without one, but we’re not sure why you would want to. Nearly 70% of B2B marketers use email newsletters to distribute content, according to The Content Marketing Institute. In the past year, 74% of B2C marketers created email newsletter content.
“Newsletters, both internal and external, are extremely important because they offer a direct line of communication between you and your audience,” said Filza Naveed of ContactMonkey Inc. “Unlike other digital mediums, email newsletters are also extremely intimate.”
The point of a marketing newsletter is to stay top of mind with leads, prospects, partners, existing customers and internal staff. Think of the newsletter as the linchpin of all content marketing on the web. The information within is not sales-focused, but it’s highly relevant to the types of people you would sell to and will help you nurture relationships with that audience that may lead to revenue opportunities down the road.
What Are the Different Newsletter Types?
Many companies prioritise their customer newsletter, but really, newsletters can have just as much value for employees and prospects. Let’s take a closer look at the difference between the three:
- An employee newsletter, also known as an internal newsletter or company newsletter, is a company’s distribution of internal communication. When used effectively, it can keep employees informed about what’s happening with the business while breaking down barriers between departments, reducing company email congestion and reminding employees of brand mission and values.
- Customer newsletters offer the perfect opportunity to test marketing campaigns. Newsletters designed to reach customers help businesses flaunt their authority in an industry to existing customers. They also represent a chance to add value to the customer relationship, partly by keeping customers alert of new products and services as they become available, but also by sharing the latest trends, tips and advice with them. Remember: Marketing doesn’t stop after the sale.
- Prospect newsletters represent the foundation of most email marketing efforts. Their purpose is to build brand authority and trust with the contacts on your email list. The idea is to provide great content that has no apparent sales intent for newsletter subscribers (such as industry news and advice). This newsletter content can have a compounding effect. Over time, your leads get used to seeing you as a source of great content, and even if they don’t have an immediate need for your services, they won’t have to think twice about who to contact when that time comes. It’s the classic long game of nurturing leads toward becoming potential customers.
What Are the Common Goals for Email Newsletters?
Think of your newsletter as a newspaper that’s dedicated solely to your business. What do you want your readers to know, and how do you want them to feel about your company?
Just as a newspaper needs to be informative, timely and meaningful, your email newsletter should do the same. What do you want to get out of this circulation?
You can meet specific newsletter goals through common metrics that can be tracked through marketing automation software. Those include:
- Total newsletter subscribers.
- Subscription growth rate.
- Deliverability rate.
- Spam rate.
- Unsubscription rate.
- Open rate.
- Click-to-open rate.
- Click-through rate.
Click-through rate tells you the number of people who clicked on one or more links in your newsletter, measured against the total number of emails you’ve sent. A high click-through rate typically indicates that a high percentage of your audience is clicking on the links or calls to action embedded in your email. It’s a sign that you’re sharing a relatable message and satisfying your readers. A low click-through rate may indicate that you’re not including clear calls to action or that the content you’re promoting isn’t interesting — or that you’re promoting it in an uninteresting way.
Click-to-open rate is also a telling metric. It answers this question: What percentage of subscribers who open your newsletter click on something? A low click-to-open rate could mean a lot of things, and not all of them are necessarily bad. For instance, it could mean that many of your newsletter subscribers just don’t like what they see when they open your message. They just aren’t compelled to click on your latest blog post or most recent customer success story.
However, it could just as easily mean that your newsletter subscribers have no reason to click, because they get all the information they need from your newsletter. As a general rule, directing subscribers to the content on your blog or other pages on your site always presents other opportunities. So if you aren’t using newsletters to funnel traffic to your site, you should seriously consider it.
Conversion is also key. Your goals, which may include completing a “Contact us” form fill or earning “Request a Demo” clicks, have the most direct tie to revenue.
To reach a variety of obtainable goals, such as boosting sales, encouraging engagement, maintaining customer loyalty and communicating effectively, your newsletter copy should be clean, concise and relevant to your audience. Use analytics functions like the audience tab in Google Analytics to get a clear understanding of the demographic you’re targeting.
What Should My Email Newsletter Contain?
A successful newsletter — which can be measured by metrics such as HTML open rate, clickthroughs, conversions, forwards and delivery rate — should contain:
- A creative subject line. Give readers a reason to open up the email.
- A strong call to action. What are you trying to achieve with your newsletter?
- Informative and organised body copy. Your newsletter content is what they come for. Make sure your copy and accompanying images are engaging and polished, and that they’re organised in an intuitive, mobile-responsive email template.
- An ability to opt out of future emails. You have to give your readers the option to stop receiving the circulation. Otherwise, they could become frustrated and end up souring on your brand.
- A consistent schedule. Whether you send weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, be consistent in how often you send out the newsletter.
While every company email template will be unique, there are some general newsletter design guidelines to consider:
- Make sure the colour scheme matches your brand.
- Use fonts that are legible and well-organised.
- Take advantage of subheads to help your readers flow through the content.
- Stack newsletter content so it’s easily scrollable.
- Use a responsive newsletter template that will load well on multiple device types.
- Embed images to keep your newsletter from becoming stale.
One other thing for good measure: Not that you don’t already know this, but make darn well sure you have a quick and easy-to-find unsubscribe mechanism. It’s literally mandated by law in the UK and the EU.
Consider These Clever Newsletter Ideas
Need a launching pad for your next company newsletter strategy? Consider the following clever newsletter ideas, plus some real-life examples that work:
1. A Creative Name to Set the Mood for What’s to Come
The easiest way to entice your audience to sign up for your email newsletter — and keep them coming back for more — is to reel them in with a quirky name.
For example, MOO is a company that creates printed products like business cards, postcards, flyers and more. They dubbed their company newsletter the MOOsletter. Stop right there and sign me up.
Even the welcome email is filled with pizzazz, from casually written content to a picture that includes a chicken, a fresh baked loaf of bread, champagne and a red balloon. Readers know they are signing up for fun content when they subscribe to the MOOsletter.
2. A Success Story From a Customer
It’s not enough to offer your readers an inside look into the products or services you’re offering. They want to know the inside scoop to your accomplishments: Is business going well for your company due to client success?
Your newsletter offers an optimal opportunity to highlight one of your customers who felt overwhelmingly pleased and satisfied by your services.
Here’s an example of a success story we included in our weekly newsletter:
3. An Employee Spotlight or Company Story
While a success story gives your readers an inside look on a positive, real-life experience with your company, an employee spotlight lets your audience live a day — or email — in the life of one of your trusted workers. They get a more intimate peek behind the scenes of your business. If you take the employee spotlight route, don’t forget to include a few visuals. A headshot, plus a few personal pictures of the employee at home with family and friends, shows your company is professional but also relatable to readers.
If you’re looking for a creative way to showcase your employees, create blogs dedicated to team members like we do and share them in your newsletter.
Another idea is to include important company milestones or anniversaries in your newsletter from time to time. Here’s an example from CharityWater.org:
4. A Letter From the CEO
What better way to make a connection between your brand and your reader than with a personal letter from the CEO?
One example of this approach comes from Robert Glazer, founder and managing director of marketing agency Acceleration Partners. Each week, he sends out a company newsletter named the Friday Forward. As reported by Inc. magazine, the newsletter contains inspirational stories, mental exercises, reminders and advice for taking steps toward personal growth and more.
“Each Friday I started sharing a note with my team based on a leadership theme-a quote and a related tip/article around personal growth,” Glazer shared with Inc. “The response was overwhelmingly positive, to the point where people told me they look forward to it each Friday.”
5. A Training Session or Course
Are you interested in teaching your audience about the latest SEO best practices? Perhaps you want to motivate them to try the newest blog content creation tactics you’ve had a lot of success with. No matter what, your readers are subscribers for a reason: They value the information you are sharing.
The Association for Strategic Marketing uses this tactic by advertising its webinar to subscribers. You learn when the webinar is, plus the important points they’ll cover. It’s yet another way for your company to prove its prowess in your industry by offering practical solutions to your customers’ and prospects’ pain points.
While technically not a newsletter, we’ve also used email to promote training and courses — and in fact, we even launched an entire email course. You can sign up here, if for no other reason than to get some ideas and inspiration on how you might use educational content for your subscribers.
6. Blog Teasers
Blog teasers are perfect for inspiring your readers to open up an article and dive into your blog. While a common company newsletter tactic, there are different ways to amplify blog teasers if that’s the meat and potatoes of your circulation.
Instead of including a paragraph or summary of each blog post in the teaser, why not ask readers a question that will be answered in the blog post instead? This gets your audience to think and can entice them to open up the blog and get to the answer. Again, driving traffic to the blog should always be a top priority. There’s a simple credo in digital marketing: Every website session is a potential engagement opportunity.
Here’s one of our favourite examples from Moz of how to structure a newsletter that’s primary goal is to drive traffic to its blog and resources:
7. A Contest or Giveaway
Promotional emails can have a place in your weekly or monthly newsletter. In fact, offering your audience deals, specials, coupons and discounts can actually help you build a loyal newsletter following. If you’re worried about coming off too salesy to your readers, don’t make it the only element in the newsletter. Instead, be subtle and place it near the bottom of the page.
This is also a great way to promote social sharing of your content with your newsletter. For example, a contest hosted on your preferred social platform can motivate engagement and interest, leading to improved reach on the platform.
Take a page out of West Elm’s book, and cross-promote your social media presence on your newsletter.
Take a page out of West Elm’s book, and cross-promote your social media presence on your newsletter.
8. FAQs & Surveys
Sometimes, the smartest strategy for helping your target audience feel more comfortable and informed about your business is by being straightforward and honest about company goals and intentions. Improve transparency with your readers by sending out a round of frequently asked questions and their corresponding answers. Start with the questions your sales team receives most often and build from there.
Surveys are another way to give your subscribers a chance to engage with your brand and also provide valuable feedback for your newsletter. Ask them how they are enjoying the newsletter and if there’s any content they’d like to see from you. These are great ways to gauge how valuable your newsletter is to your audience and even pinpoint new topic areas to cover. It’s also an opportunity to collect responses and ideas that you can use in a user generated content campaign (so long as your users know that’s how their responses will be used).
Below is a great example of how to promote a survey in a newsletter. Sur la Table led its email newsletter with a link to the survey, and followed it with links to other content:
The Key Takeaway
Today, email marketing campaigns are more effective than ever. With so many consumers depending on emails from businesses, there’s no reason your company shouldn’t be taking advantage of the opportunity to create and distribute a newsletter filled with your most valuable content.
As long as you understand how to craft and maintain a strong message in a clever and exciting way, you should have no problem getting your audience to stick around.
Just remember: Creating a newsletter isn’t as easy as distributing random content — you have to create something that your audience will look forward to reading, bringing them joy and excitement the second your email hits their inbox.
Updated November 2021.
